Earlier in the year I showed you how we made a camera nest box. Luckily, some blue tits decided to nest in it and we have been closely watching their progress.
They had several attempts at building the nest. We would look at the camera one day and see it full of nesting material and then the next day it would be empty again! We thought they would never finish their nest!
However, they made a beautiful nest in the end and the female laid one egg a day for 10 days. 10 eggs is a huge number and we suspected that not all would hatch.
Once all ten eggs were laid, she began incubating them. They were very dedicated parents, with the male regularly coming to feed the female as she kept the eggs warm. Here she is incubating:
On 3rd May, the eggs began to hatch. They did not all hatch at once, but, over a period of 2 days, 6 of the eggs hatched. The babies were tiny, pink, featherless and blind.
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The parents have been regularly feeding the young with caterpillars from the nearby oak tree as well as food from our birdfeeder. Their rate of growth was incredible - they looked bigger every time we look at the camera! They very quickly developed tufty feathers.
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Sadly on 18th May, it became clear that 2 babies had not survived and the parents must have removed them from the nest. Only 4 hungry mouths remained and we were hoping that they would all make it to adulthood. A few days later, we were then devastated to see that one of the remaining four had also died and was still in the nest as it was now too heavy for the parents to lift out.
Eventually on 24th May, three of the babies fledged. However, they were not yet able to fly and were just hopping around on the ground. One fell prey to a cat but I can happily say that the other 2 made it and can now fly.
Here they are visiting the bird feeder. You can see that they are still asking the parents for food but can also feed themselves now - they are doing well! The babies still have yellow faces, unlike the adults whose faces are white.
